


this earth of majesty

by laughingwithsalads



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-05-13 01:42:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14739695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingwithsalads/pseuds/laughingwithsalads
Summary: When Eames flails awake with the greater part of Sunday missing, the thought occurs that he might be a touch hungover.





	1. Chapter 1

When Eames flails awake with the greater part of Sunday missing, the thought occurs that he might be a touch hungover. The fact that his head feels like a block of acid-etched cement and his mouth like the arse-end of a dehydrated camel would tend to confirm his initial supposition. But neither fact explains, in any particular detail, why half the world’s paparazzi are camped on his doorstep.

“What in the name of ever loving fuck is happening?” Eames asks.

The lock on the front door tumbles and Yusuf hurries in. He’s clutching a pint of semi-skimmed and a crumpled red top. Fire and flame is the front page photograph, the headline hidden in the hasty fold.

“What in the name of ever loving fuck is happening?” Eames asks, for he thinks it a question well worth repeating.

Yusuf hands Eames the paper. “There was a plane crash,” he says.

That’s all he says, but that’s all he needs to say, really. Eames swallows. Reads a line. Another. Can’t bear the next. “All of them?” he asks instead.

Yusuf nods.

“Christ.”

_All of them._

Eames didn’t mind the old chap, is the thing. Hadn’t spoken to him in years, save the odd wedding or funeral, but he truly didn’t mind him. There were worse fathers, he’s quite sure. Both Eames’s brothers were unremitting cunts, of that he’s also sure. But his sisters-in-law were lovely women, and the little ones…

Not even in the double digits, the two of them.

“Christ almighty,” he whispers, thumps down to the decaying sofa he woke up on, buries his head in his hands.

There’s some chinking and sloshing, and Yusuf hands him a drink. A good three fingers of something astoundingly alcoholic. Eames downs it, then gestures with his empty glass to the door, to the vultures beyond. “Why are they here?” he asks. “It’s a touch over-the-top for morbid curiosity, surely?”

Yusuf blinks at him. “You don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?”

“They’re saying you’re next in line.”

Eames snorts, bile in it. “I am not.” He most assuredly is not. “There’s…” Eames attempts to click his fingers. “Whatshisface. Chap with the cauliflower ears? Theo, isn’t it?”

Yusuf shakes his head. “Done for embezzlement last year.”

“Aunt Josephine then.”

“Dementia.”

“Amelia is—”

“Didn’t get consent before her wedding.”

“Then bloody hell,” Eames says, “there’s a thousand cousins besides, with blood bluer than the Med, not least of all the bloody fucking Fischers. I’m a bastard, Yusuf. Do you honestly think they’d—”

A staccato knock at the door, the retort of heavy arms fire in the aching echo chamber of Eames’s skull. The knock unloads another salvo when it goes unanswered. Then another, more insistent than the last.

“Oh, sod it,” Yusuf mutters, getting to his feet.

The door opens to the brief strobing of a thousand camera flashes. It’s all Eames sees before he digs the heels of his hands into his eyelids.

_All of them._

Dear god, all of them.

“Captain Eames.”

He looks up. The bloke standing next to Yusuf is three-pieced and stern, pomaded, pressed. An underling from the Private Secretary's Office, Eames has not a single doubt.

“If you’re here to deliver the headline news,” Eames bites out, “I’m already privy.”

The underling doesn’t so much as flinch. Instead, “Your Majesty,” he says on a studied, practiced bow. “The King is dead. Long live the King.”

“Oh, fuck me,” Eames says.


	2. Chapter 2

“Your Majesty,” the underling begins. “Sir Stephen has asked that you—”

“Excuse me,” Eames says, staggering to his feet. “Have to.” He manages a noncommittal, queasy grimace towards the loo, follows it at quick march. Then when the door’s firmly locked behind him, he makes the very best of his extensive OBUA experience to shimmy down the drainpipe, bypass the waiting paparazzi, and stroll around the corner for a pint.

 

#

 

The pub’s dead, that point on a Sunday evening when only the most dedicated of drinkers are in residence, and they’re all far more interested in their glasses than him.

Davey’s behind the bar, though. He freezes the second he spots Eames. Tries to nod but get stuck somewhere halfway towards a bow.

“Evening,” Eames says, depositing himself on a barstool. “Pint of the usual, please.”

Davey just about manages to set a glass in front of him. It’s only three-quarters full and mostly head, but Eames downs it anyway.

On the pub's widescreen, the usual omnipresent footy’s been forsaken for rolling news: the Palace gates, the flag at half-mast, the requisite crowd shots, a gaggle of black-clad talking heads as close as they can finagle themselves to the crash site. Then the image switches — burning hillside becomes gold and gilt and hanging velvet. It’s him and the pater, years back, footage pulled from the VC ceremony, of all fucking places.

Davey shakes himself out of his stupor to offer an equally shaky, “Jesus Christ, mate.”

“My sentiments precisely.” Eames salutes him with his empty glass. “If I can trouble you for the same again?”

“I’ll get that, Davey.” Yusuf — and standing behind him, the Palace underling.

“Et tu, Yusuf?”

“This is Arthur,” Yusuf says, then adds in an undertone, “and Arthur is terrifying. I’d grass on my own mother if he asked. Pint of bitter for me, please.”

Arthur the Underling doesn’t order a drink. He seems the sort. Just stands there being stern and painfully North American.

So Eames waits until he draws breath to speak—

“Your Majesty.”

—then interrupts. “Has it escaped everyone’s notice that I am intensely, irrevocably illegitimate?”

“You’re blood,” Arthur says. “And you were recognised by the Crown.”

Which is true. Eames does have a dukedom tucked away somewhere, and a few more titles besides, all of them courtesy of his grandfather. Nothing that he’s ever used, and nothing that makes him legitimate. But blood is blood, and it seems blood ranks above birth today for the Palace and their whims.

“Then where’s the abdication papers?” Eames says. “Let’s get this nonsense over with, and you can move onto your next sacrificial lamb.”

Arthur doesn’t produce any papers. Instead, “If the Crown doesn't fall to you, Your Majesty,” he says, “then it passes to Her Grace The Duchess of Somnacin.”

That stops Eames short, just as intended, he's quite sure. “You wouldn’t,” Eames says. “She’s barely eighteen.”

“Her age is irrelevant,” Arthur says, maddeningly level. "If you choose to abdicate, then Her Grace is next in order of succession."

Eames feels it then, that tickle between his eyebrows, a sniper taking aim. He doesn't bother to dodge, though. He knows when he's done for. “What in the name of fuck is Miles playing at?”

“Maybe you should ask him that yourself, Your Majesty."

“Oh, _should_ I?” And a marked man Eames may be, but it’s not in him to go down without a fight. “Because that sounds like a pretty ruse to encourage me back to the Palace. Which I’m afraid, Arthur, won’t be happening. I'm to report up at Leuchars by this time tomorrow, and I have a very early flight — and a frankly homicidal CO.”

Arthur extracts a sleek little mobile from his sleek little suit, dials a number with infuriatingly pedantic care, hands Eames the phone, and on the other end of the line—

“This could only happen to you, you stupid fuck!”

—is Eames’s commanding officer. “Colonel MacIntosh, sir.”

“The fucking _king_ , Eames!”

“So I’m told, sir.”

“Fucking Christ, son!”

Eames has nothing to say. There isn’t, really, anything to say.

He’s going to do it, and the Palace knows it. His CO knows it. Arthur knows it. Christ, he wouldn’t be surprised if Yusuf’s figured it out by now too. Because if Eames buggers off, it’s Ariadne, and there’s no way in a month of shitty Sundays he’d willingly subject her to that. Not when he can step into the line of fire instead.

“Well,” the Colonel says, clearing his throat around another aborted bellow. “They’ll make you resign your commission by the time the evening’s out, so I’ll just say you’re a fucking stupid fuck, but you’re a brave fuck. We’ll be there for the lying-in-state, and if we don’t get an invite to the coronation, then you can fuck yourself. Understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

“Right, fuck off then.”

And that’s that.

But won’t do to go quietly. He has to put on a good show, at the very least.

So, “Abdication papers?” he asks again.

“At the Palace,” Arthur says.

Eames snorts. “Have this awfully well-planned out, don’t you?”

“I’m awfully good at my job,” Arthur says, his mouth quirking, just a touch of a smirk.

"Yes, apparently you are." And entirely irrationally, that makes Eames despise him just a touch less. "Well, then." He sets down his glass, gets to his feet, and waves cheery-fucking-oh to life as he knows it. “Lead the way, Arthur.”

But Arthur doesn’t, of course.

No one precedes the King.


	3. Chapter 3

Midnight, and Miles’s cavernous office is empty. Hushed and still.

Nothing like the secretarial nook outside, the one inhabited by any number of frantic underlings who’d bobbed like the seashore when Arthur hustled him past. But Arthur’s abandoned him, and now Eames’s only company is yet another widescreen, its own talking head chattering quietly over some documentary footage.

Eames vaguely remembers it — the imbedded camera crew, the gritty little film about the newest sprogs and their first deployment.

He’s in the background. Zoomed-in until he’s pixellated, laughing at some undoubtedly terrible joke Tam’s telling. He’s looking the worse for wear — wind, sand, sun, all the bloody insurgents trying their level best to kill him. And it must’ve been the very start of that year, because his arm is still heavily bandaged and his eyes are somewhere else entirely.

“—the former cavalry captain, decorated for gallantry—”

Eames throws a miscellaneous clicker at the telly. “Must we?” Oddly, the talking head ignores him entirely.

But—

“They’ll be back to the playboy prince in no time,” Miles tells him as he strides in, Arthur at his heels. “Enjoy the fawning while it lasts.”

“I was never a prince,” Eames says from his slouch on the loveseat in the corner. “Still ain’t. Got myself promoted straight to top brass. And I’ll have you know, I was a charming rake, never a playboy.”

“You were certainly something,” Miles says, and Arthur makes a low noise that suggests he might be in agreement.

So Eames beats the breast, all entirely sincere contrition. “Gents, can’t we just be thankful that my youthful indiscretions were entirely of the cunt and cock variety, with not even the slightest powdering of pharmaceuticals.”

Arthur’s guttural muttering escalates then to a bitten-off, “Jesus.”

“Pardon me?” Eames says gaily. “Didn’t quite catch that.”

“Ignore him.” Miles gives Eames one of his patented narrow looks. “Our dear Captain Eames can behave himself when he wants to. He’s choosing to be an insolent little prick on purpose, because he knows we’ve got him penned in and he doesn’t like it.”

“Would anyone?” Eames counters. “Although, Arthur? Must say. You do strike me as the type who’d enjoy partaking in a touch of good, firm—”

“Freddie, enough!”

That shocks Eames quiet. Not like Miles to indulge in true informalities, even if he has known Eames since he was toddling about in the altogether. And besides all that, he’s absolutely right.

“Sorry,” Eames says. Clears his throat around the awkwardness of the moment. “Quite out of line.”

Arthur nods the apology away, equally awkwardly.

And Miles sighs sharply, tugging at his tie. “If you’ll excuse us for a moment, Arthur?”

“Of course, Sir Stephen.” And off Arthur goes, with sure, measured steps. He picks up the clicker and mutes the talking head on his way out the door, which is far more of a kindness than Eames deserves.

“There. You don’t have to pull pigtails anymore,” Miles says. “So get the plum out of your mouth, get your feet on the floor, and at least make an attempt to be the man your grandfather knew you could be.”

Eames lets his boots thump down off the coffee table and sits up straight, sufficiently chastised — a sensation he remembers distinctly from his teenage years.

“Where’d you find him?” Eames asks, nodding after Arthur. “Grown in a lab to your exacting specifications?”

“He was the concierge at the hotel our last state visit across the pond,” Miles says, deigning in turn to let his own voice sound a little more Bow Bells than West Brompton. “Brutally efficient bloke. Poached him on the spot.”

“Training up a successor?”

“We all have to retire at some point.”

Eames snorts. “You’ll retire to your coffin, old man, and you bloody well know it.”

In the muted light of the room, the sudden flash of fire in the dark startles them both. The contrast on screen is severe, but Eames can just about make out the burning remnants of a wing.

“Was it— Did they—” He doesn’t quite know, precisely, what he’s asking, but Miles understands all the same.

“Cabin lost pressure long before it came down,” he says.

Unconscious, then, for the worst of it. Eames nods. “That’s something, at least.”

“Well, there’s always something.” Miles props a hip against his desk, crosses his arms, and contemplates Eames in a way Eames also distinctly remembers from his younger years. “You look like you’ve been dragged arseways through a hedge.”

“Seru’s stag do last night.”

“Oh, Christ,” Miles mutters. He reaches for his phone, and his rapid tapping unleashes a fresh wave of panicked bustle from the underlings outside. “Those pictures will play wonderfully when the tabloids get their hands on them.”

“You try going drink for drink with an eighteen-stone hunk of virile Fijian manhood, and see how you fare.”

Miles offers a sympathetic wince, but it’s a wince with just a touch of an edge to it.

Eames squints against his bleary, hungover eyes. “In fact, if we’re talking of tired and emotional, you’re not looking too hot yourself, old chap.”

“Food poisoning,” Miles says. “Arthur and me both. Had us knocked out flat until this morning. Too bloody late by then, of course. Had to send some of the junior staff in our stead.”

Which explains quite a bit, not least why all the family were on the same flight. Nothing but bad luck and inexperience.

“Bloody lovely kids they were too,” Miles says, and both of them pretend not to notice while Miles scrubs at his eyes with his hankie.

Eames looks instead to the tumbled collection of files and photos on Miles’s desktop. “What were your other options?”

“The Duchess of Somnacin, the Duke of Morrow, or the Marquess of Nash,” Miles says.

“Two Americans, an Australian — or an utter arsehole. Must’ve been in quite the quandary to pick the latter,” Eames says. “Or you’re up to something, like you always are.”

His cheek earns him a raised eyebrow. “The Accession Council has met informally, and it’s been decided that there’s enough wiggle room in the revised rules of succession to see you past any legal challenge. Needless to say, the Council would much prefer the Duchess, but it’s also assumed Her Grace would abdicate as quickly as you tried to.”

“Which would push you down the list to Fischer One and Two?”

“And the Council has made it known that while they’re not adverse to Fischer the Younger—”

“Fischer the Elder’s in the way,” Eames finishes, “and Fischer the Elder has far too many ties to foreign business interests for their comfort.”

Miles nods. “So you’re the stop-gap, until heir presumptive becomes heir apparent.”

“Quite the stop-gap,” Eames says, not a little tightly, “when the bloody stubborn old bastard will live to a hundred just to spite us all.”

“He’s dying,” Miles says.

That catches Eames short. “Wh— What?”

“A year. Maybe less. That’s all we need you for.”

Eames hangs there a moment, suspended somewhere between offence and relief. “A year?”

“At most. Then Maurice dies, you abdicate, we crown Robert in the coronation that should’ve been yours, and we all go on our merry way.”

Eames blinks at him. “And I totter back off to my military career with not a care in the world? Is that how this goes, old chap?”

Miles waves that meagre protest away. “You would’ve, what? Made Major? Done five more years? Ten at a push? You weren’t much longer for the Army and you know it. We’ve just hastened your decommissioning.”

“I’m not actually a battleship, you know,” Eames mutters.

Miles phone bleeps then. Whatever it tells him makes him click his fingers. “Up. Follow me.”

Eames does as he’s told, trailing meekly after — yet another painful moment of adolescent déjà vu. They make their way out through the underling holding area, where some more frantic meerkatting occurs, then through the staff quarters and out into the Palace proper.

“We’ll get you a job in search and rescue after the abdication,” Miles tells him, an eye still to his phone. “Or with some veterans' charity. You’d enjoy that. Charm knickers down and wallets open in one fell swoop.”

“Oddly enough,” Eames says, "I’m not actually a prostitute, either.”

“No,” Miles says. He turns. Stops Eames in his tracks. “You’re the King. For a year and a day, and you’ll damn well act like it. Now, the Prime Minister’s on her way. I’m off to wait at the door, so be a good boy and amble along to the throne room. You can meet her there and entirely coincidentally reinforce the image of calm and coherent kingship. And Arthur,” Miles says, just as Arthur appears out of the shadows. “Watch him. Make sure he doesn’t do a runner.”

Which Eames was not at all planning to do, even if there is a useful little fire exit to the quadrangle three doors down.

Miles exits stage left. And they stand there a moment, he and Arthur, in a repeat of their previous Entente Maladroit. But it’s too self-conscious for even Eames to stand. “I’m sorry about before,” he says, just to say it, just for something to say. “And before that, too. Not quite sure where I’ve put my Ps and Qs this evening.”

“I think it was a pretty understandable reaction, sir,” Arthur says, “given the events of the last twelve hours.”

A footman hurries past then, far too much of an old hand to do anything more than sketch a bow and keep on moving, but it’s enough to break the moment, odd and stretched as it is.

“Shall we?” Eames says.

They walk the length of the Picture Gallery, past the Rubens and the Rembrandts and the Titans, and at the end of it all, looking down at them from his perch atop the Grand Staircase, is Eames’s grandfather.

Eames comes to an unsteady halt with a stumble he’s not entirely sure he manages to hide.

“Good King Frederick,” Arthur says, his attention studiously on the portrait above them. “It looks like him.”

It does. The glint in his eye, suggesting mischief afoot. The ruddy nose and cheeks, suggesting sherry imbued. The ridiculous white moustache, suggesting questionable taste in facial hair.

“Good King Frederick,” Eames echoes — and even he can hear the blankness in his voice. It’s shock, he thinks. Knows.

“Will you take a regnal name, sir?” Arthur asks.

“Christ, no.”

“King Frederick the Second then,” Arthur says, nodding.

Eames can only nod too. The thought of living up to that name is far too much to bear, even if he only has to bear it for the bare span of a year.

So, “I remember the week he sat for this,” he says instead. Offers Arthur one brief, flicking glance. “I couldn’t have been more than…four, I think. I was such a fucking pest. I wouldn’t leave him alone, or the artist, god help her. Ended up with my fingers all over that canvas, all stuck in the oils. They’re still there, you know, hidden under the frame. The King told her to leave them. Bloody sentimental old bastard that he was.”

And it gets Eames then — a stab of grief so sharp it takes his breath for just a moment.

“He’d be proud of you, sir,” Arthur says. “For stepping up.”

He’s the only one of them who would, Eames knows that too.

But his brothers are dead. His father is dead. His grandfather, god rest him, is long dead. And whether it’s for a day or a year, Eames is King. And he might’ve done a good many distasteful things in his time, but to bring shame on his grandfather’s name will not be one of them.

Arthur’s phone trills a warning. “The Prime Minister's arrived, sir.”

So then, down the stairs and up them, through a drawing room, out into the grandeur of the throne room.

The shadows are deep amid the draping velvet and heavy silks. The chandeliers hang above, unlit, a faint shimmer of shattered light.

And up on the dais, two thrones await, carved and ciphered, glinting in the same low light.

King and consort. _Dieu et mon droit._

“Well then,” Eames says. “Best get to work, eh?”


	4. Chapter 4

The first act in the newly-minted reign of His Most Gracious Majesty King Frederick the Second of the Royal House of Eames is for the King to throw a regal fit until Parliament agrees to state funerals for all of the family, not just his father and brothers.

He stands guard for the lying-in-state. Of course he does.

But there are seven coffins and only one of him. So he goes a little silly from exhaustion, falls asleep in a committee room, wakes up covered by a miscellaneous overcoat, and staggers out into the Hall to start all over again.

Three days pass like that, in a fog of something or the other.

Then the funeral.

Funerals.

The meagre handful who can still be termed the Royal Family gather behind the gun carriages. The Fischers are both in attendance.

Maurice — quietly dignified, no hint he’s taken umbrage at being passed over for a common-born bastard. He’s a little thinner than Eames remembers him, a little more hunched, but there’s nothing in his bearing to suggest illness. He bows and shakes Eames’s hand equitably enough.

He’d make a good king, all told.

Robert is just as pinched and brittle as Eames remembers, but he’s biddable and dutiful and quiet, so Robert will make a good king too, when his time comes.

Miles and Arthur are there, behind — the rest of the Royal Household, equerries and the like. Mal’s caught a flight over and somehow managed to secrete herself into the processional.

And the Colonel’s held good to his word. The chaps and chapettes from the regiment are excruciatingly well turned-out. Eames looks at them and longs for his uniform, but it’s morning dress for him and not a foot out of line. They wouldn’t let him do this for his grandfather, so he’ll damn well do it for them.

 

#

 

From procession to train to procession to chapel.

Ariadne grips his hand tightly out of view of the cameras.

The Archbishop drones on, and the hymns are sung and the staves are broken.

The proclamations read.

There’s a diplomatic function, after. Foreign royals, heads of state, politicians of every stripe. He’s barely functioning by the end of it.

“Help me,” Mal says, her voice a tight, taught whisper.

And it’s only Arthur’s hand under his elbow that keeps him upright, that gets him back to his room.

Not the King’s Quarters. Never there. Instead, the little bedroom that used to be his as a boy. The bed’s too small now and smells of dust, but he sleeps.

Sleeps like his family in their vault.

Sleeps until afternoon the next day. Then he purloins a Rolls, spends an ill-advised few hours on the road heading back to the city, fetches Yusuf, fetches off to the pub, and — grimly, methodically, systematically — proceeds to get utterly paralytic.

What kind of devil’s bargain Miles and Arthur strike to keep those pictures out of the papers, Eames doesn’t know and doesn’t care to.

 

#

 

His family, the Palace staffers, the cabin crew, the flight crew, the poor sod out walking his dog when the plane came down, the bloody, fucking dog: Eames’s first two weeks on the job become a fortnight of funerals.

So it’s no surprise that his dreams take on a familiar edge. Fire, cordite, sand between his teeth, blood in his mouth.

He gives up on sleep. Wanders the Palace corridors for a bit, trips over a roaming corgi, terrifies a dozing protection officer and cajoles the key out of him in recompense.

Out on the balcony, the haze of pollution and the persistent glow of those few old sodium streetlamps turn the horizon copper. The city isn’t asleep. It never is. But it’s as quiet as it gets, in those liminal hours long before dawn: the odd taxi rolling down the Mall, the odd drunk staggering home from a night of revelry, the scuff of a guardsman’s boots from the forecourt below.

But up there, with him, nothing save Eames and his cracked-open memories.

Nothing until the door behind him eases open.

“Can’t sleep?” Arthur asks.

“Do we keep you in a cupboard somewhere?” Eames says, instead of answering, instead of turning around.

Arthur’s look, when he steps up beside Eames, is flat enough to make the Atacama jealous. “Sir Stephen wants one of us on duty twenty-four hours until things settle down.”

“I’ll note that you’re the one in Palace quarters and Miles is sleeping soundly in a townhouse somewhere.”

Arthur acknowledges the point with a tick of his dark eyebrow. “Perk of seniority.”

He looks, then, from where Eames has his forearms braced on the cool stone of the balustrade to the serene expanse of the forecourt. It’s a considering look, and a vaguely concerned one.

“I’m not about to fling myself off,” Eames tells him. “You needn’t fret.” He says it glib, half a joke, half something else entirely.

But the sudden thin line of Arthur’s mouth suggests that perhaps it was a worry after all. “Your Majesty—” he begins.

“Leave off with all that, would you? The name’s Eames. Or Freddie, if you absolutely must.”

“Eames.” Arthur shifts, turns a little more towards him, lowers his voice though there’s no one there to hear. “I could call a Palace doctor. Get something to help you sleep or—”

“No,” Eames says, more quickly than he should. “None of that.” He smiles then. It’s a thin smile but he manages. “This’ll pass, Arthur. It always does. You just need to keep me busy.” Then. “Please.”

Arthur studies him a moment, unreadable. But he nods. “I’ll talk to Sir Stephen in the morning.”

Eames doesn’t sleep. Dawn cleaves, eventually, through the murk. His eyes are gritty, his head numb.

But Arthur’s arm is warm and solid against his own, and that helps, a little.


	5. Chapter 5

They ease him in gently.

Give him a week of red boxes and Palace protocols.

Then presenting some Colours, commissioning a new aircraft carrier, his first investiture, heavy on the military honours.

There’s a garden party, subdued and sombre, but a garden party all the same, where the guests bob and curtsey as he passes by, as though he represents something more than a pale imitation, a cobbled-together stand-in.

 

#

 

Arthur’s his shadow through it all.

It should be Miles for his first run out. Even Eames knows enough to know that. But it’s Arthur, from first to last. Because Miles is otherwise engaged, holding court in an increasing number of locked-door meetings with grim-faced officials.

And it’s around about then that his protection detail becomes a touch more special forces than Scotland Yard.

He knows better than to comment, but does anyway. “I was in the Army for nigh on a decade, Miles. I’m really quite talented at not getting killed.”

That gets him nothing but an evil eye and an extra bobby on his beat.

 

#

 

So it’s Arthur he turns to when he forgets names and titles.

It’s Arthur there to speak a quiet, prompting word in his ear.

It’s Arthur there to pinpoint exit strategies when it’s all just a little too much, a little too soon.

 

#

 

But he must be doing well enough by Arthur’s estimation, because his engagements start to trend more Joe Public.

He’s up in the Shires — to tour some new community hub, for a ceremonial luncheon, for a walkabout after. There’s the usual greeting party waiting: a lord mayor, miscellaneous local dignitaries, a young lad in blazer and tie. He has a posy of wildflowers ready to present and no royal ladies to present them to.

Eames sees the little chap flush with embarrassment when he realises the conundrum. “Tell you what,” Eames says, taking the flowers from him with a conspiratorial wink. “I’ll give these to my man Arthur. He’s a keen horticulturalist.”

He presents the posy to Arthur with a flourish that sets the boy laughing.

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Arthur says, flat, but that illusive twitch of a smirk comes out to play, so it seems like he enjoys the jape.

And it seems like everyone watching does too, because posy escalates to bunch, and bunch to bouquet, and Arthur accepts them all with the same look of utterly blank-faced professionalism, which makes the whole thing all the more hilarious.

 

#

 

“Keep up the double act,” Miles tells them. “The crowds like it, the papers like it, and Christ alive, the internet loves it.”

 

#

 

South of the capital this time, to attend some grand, centuries-old country show.

Not, precisely, what Eames ever thought he’d be doing with his life. But then he hadn’t, in particular, ever stopped to consider what he would do with his life, if not follow orders, if not serve King and Country.

“The rhubarb arrives at dawn,” Eames says, his smile growing a tad rictus as he waves to the cheering crowd. “Hasten the chickens, row away the mongoose.”

There’s a moment of baffled silence, then, “Eames, what are you—”

Eames glances over his shoulder to where Arthur stands, a clear five paces behind. “Has a man truly entertained himself on a day if he hasn’t bamboozled the tabloid lip-readers at least once?”

Arthur rolls his eyes almost imperceptibly. “Just so long as you don’t say anything that’ll make my job any harder.”

“Oh?” Eames says. “So, ‘You look exceptionally handsome today, Arthur, and those trousers are sinfully well cut.’ Something like that, you mean?”

“Yeah,” Arthur says, nothing imperceptible about his smirk, “something like that.”

Which, of course, is the only snippet of their conversation the lip-readers manage to transcribe verbatim.


	6. Chapter 6

The morning next and Eames is summoned to Miles’ office, and to a selection of luridly headlined tabloids spread out on the coffee table.

“Ah,” Eames says.

“They gave you a month and one salacious comment,” Miles tells him from his perch behind his gargantuan desk. “Generous, I’d say.”

“I thought we weren’t commenting on the comment.”

“We’re not,” Miles says. “It’s all conjecture on their part. But however you slice it, you did tell Arthur you liked his arse.”

“I told him I liked his trousers,” Eames amends. “They were very well put together.”

“I’ll pass on your compliments to my tailor,” Arthur says, dry.

“Please do.”

That earns Eames a twitching hint of a smile, and Eames’ relief is palpable: Arthur seems entirely unaffected by the swell of media attention rushing his way. It’s all water off the back of a well-tailored mallard.

“Listen,” Eames begins. “Chaps, we’re all aware that yesterday was a Charlie Foxtrot of the upmost, but—”

“This isn’t about yesterday,” Miles says. “This is about the avalanche of column inches yesterday set off. Arthur, give him the highlights, would you?”

Arthur flips open his omnipresent moleskine. “A Right Royal Romp,” he reads, po-faced, voice so monotonously blank it has to be intentional. “King Knocked My Knockers All Night Long. Randy Royal Rammed My Rear With His Rock-Hard—”

“In my defence,” Eames cuts in, “the bloke in question did have a truly spectacular rear.”

Which is not much of a defence, if he’s to go by the twin looks of disdain aimed his way.

Eames sighs. “Look, I went off the rails after Grandpa died. I know that, you know that, the entirety of the tabloid press knows that too.” He waves a hand to the sea of newsprint. “But the freshest of these kiss-and-tells is a good ten years distant, and still a replay at that. I’ve been a very good boy ever since — save yesterday. Which I can only apologise for. Again.”

Miles says nothing for a moment. Just watches him from atop steepled fingers. Then, “Apologies will get us absolutely nowhere with this steaming pile of manure. Best thing is to get you away from the long lenses for a while.”

Eames can only blink at him. “What?”

“Time for you to go north of the border for a few weeks of rest and recuperation.”

“But I’ve barely been at the job a month.”

“And it’s been a trying month,” Miles says, “given the circumstances of the ascension. Your adoring public will understand, and your clamouring press will just have to lump it.”

“But none of the family liked it up there,” Eames says, not entirely sure why he’s still protesting. “The castle’s been shut up for years.”

“Then we’ll open up the old place on a skeleton staff,” Miles says, having absolutely none of it. “You can come back in a fortnight, meek and mild, and charm everyone senseless again, indiscretions forgotten.” He tips his chin in Arthur’s direction. “Go and get things organised, would you?”

“Yes, Sir Stephen.”

And that — is that. Off Arthur goes, striding out of the office. Eames can do nothing for a moment but stare, utterly addlepated, at the empty doorway.

He looks back to Miles on the clearing of his throat. And Miles must see something in Eames’ face then, because his own face softens minutely. “Your grandfather loved the castle, so do you, and bastard or not, you were the favourite grandchild. Everyone knows it. So it behoves us, especially today, to reinforce that fact.”

“Miles—”

“You were doing well. Bloody well, my boy. Can’t have them swing back to the playboy prince again.”

“Doing well?” Eames’ snort is painful, full of bile. “Christ, Miles, I have no fucking clue what I’m doing.”

“You don’t have to know what you’re doing,” Miles tells him. “You just have to follow orders. One year. That’s it.”

“One year,” Eames echoes.

One year. Just one.

 

 

#

 

It makes sense for Miles to go with him. Dispel any lingering rumours. Stifle any new speculation. Keep Eames on the tightest of regal reins.

But Miles, when the time comes to depart, is cloistered in yet another meeting, and Eames is left to fight the growing sense of unease that his trip north might be less to get him away from the press, more to get him out of the capital.

 

#

 

So it’s Arthur instead, shadowing his steps from palace to airport to castle. And the castle, in the dreary light of a dreich autumn afternoon, is in as sorry a state as Eames predicted — the ivy overgrown, the damp well set in. It’s a struggle to call it crumbling grandeur. It’s a struggle to call it anything at all, save a wreck.

And it’s quite clear Arthur is entirely unimpressed by his new surrounds.

“Boiler gone again?” Eames asks when Arthur takes a breath from upbraiding a wide-eyed janitor about pertinent health and safety regulations.

“Maintenance are looking at it,” the bitten-out reply.

“If by maintenance you mean Gordon,” Eames says, “then we’ll be lucky if we know warmth again this decade.”

That earns him a fresh scowl, and Eames decides to make himself scarce before evisceration by evil eye becomes a side note on his death certificate.

 

#

 

He and one of the undergardeners get a fire going after a few singed fingers and a few trips upstairs and down. He sends word to Arthur and hopes someone is brave enough to deliver it.

And someone is, because when next he checks, he finds Arthur, still wearing his coat, slumped in an armchair in front of the fireplace.

Eames brandishes the flask and two chipped mugs he filched from the kitchens on his last recce through. “Cuppa?”

“Sure.” Arthur puts down his phone, though reluctantly at that. “Thanks.” Takes a sip of Eames’ perfectly acceptable builder’s tea. Serves up a pinched moue of displeasure.

“That bad?” Eames asks, not a little miffed. He’d even went to the effort — Christ knows why — of digging some Tetley out of the back of a cupboard.

“I’m more of a coffee kinda guy.”

“And let me guess,” Eames says. “You drink it black and quadruple-caffeinated?”

Arthur’s mouth tips up a notch. “Gotta play to those stereotypes, huh?”

“Don’t we all.”

Not much one for chit-chat, is Arthur. He sips his tea, pokes away at his phone, scratches out the occasional scribble in his notebook, where he no doubt has Eames’ schedule noted to the last half-second on a Thursday five months hence.

But there’s something oddly welcome in the companionable quiet. Something oddly quietening, perhaps.

Because it’s late, night well drawing in. Far lighter than it would be down south, but even still, Eames feels his eyes a touch heavy — which is a surprise. Sleep is, as always, proving a bugger, his brain a little too caught — always caught — on fire and brimstone, on blood and ash. But it’s warm enough now in his grandfather’s old sitting room, two lumpy armchairs and a patched-up footstool to share.

With the dull knock of his scuffed, muddy wellies against Arthur’s polished brogues, Eames tips off to sleep.

Soundly. Entirely.

Not a nightmare to be found.


	7. Chapter 7

When he wakes it’s morning, sun already high.

There’s a familiar overcoat covering him and a cup of cold tea at hand. Eames downs it, fetches himself a bite of breakfast, fetches his kit, then goes to find Arthur.

“Morning, gents.”

And finds him with one of the ghillies, inspecting, of all things, some dilapidated window caming.

“Your Majesty,” the ghillie says, thumb and finger to the rim of his flatcap.

Nothing from Arthur but a distracted grunt — which suggests he’s not made much headway into the checklist he’s undoubtedly set himself.

But all work and no play makes Arthur an even duller boy.

So Eames hefts his bergen higher on his shoulders. “Thinking of going on a bit of a tab up the glen,” he says, nodding that way. “Fancy joining me?”

Arthur looks like he fancies nothing of the sort — but he also knows he can’t decline. He’s under strict orders too, after all.

So it’s with a faint kind of relish that Eames meets up with Arthur at the bottom of one of the tamer paths. Arthur’s rustled up a pair of little-used walking boots from somewhere, and the rest of the gear to go with them. Absurdly stylish the lot of it, not even a hint of the usual omnipresent neon.

Eames takes a moment to take in the glorious whole, then another equally joyful moment to focus on the grumpy detail. “You look entirely miserable.”

“I’m from California,” Arthur says, as though that explains everything. Then, “Southern California,” he amends, which does, in fact, explain almost everything all at once.

 

#

 

The rain catches up with them somewhere near the middle of their climb, so they take shelter in a little cradled nook on the mountainside.

Eames gets the burner going and the tea on, and they share a tinfoil packet of corned-beef sandwiches and a bag of crushed ready salted between them while the wild Highland wind blows a hoolie all around.

Arthur looks like he might be seriously considering regicide. Eames, on the other hand, feels more himself than he has in weeks. Months even. Rested, refreshed, the cobwebs blown away.

He sorts their mugs, holds Arthur’s out to him, doesn’t quite manage to hide the grimace the stretch induces.

“You okay?” Arthur asks, forehead creasing.

“It’s the damp. Makes the arm ache a touch.”

Arthur’s look turns questioning. A little titbit, there, that he’s not been privy to.

“Old shrapnel injury,” Eames explains. “From the ambush. Nothing to worry—”

The wind dies suddenly, the way it’s wont to do up in the hills. Nothing unusual in that. But — something unusual. The muffled crunch of trampled heather and the sudden, faint spice of snapped bracken in the air.

Eames shifts a little, setting himself more firmly between Arthur and the path behind. “What d’you think then?” he asks, tipping his head to the view.

“It’s, uh, solitary?” Arthur offers.

Bleak, he means. Barren.

“Peaceful,” Arthur says after a moment. “Secluded.”

And Eames is hard pressed not to imagine him mentally thumbing his way through the thesaurus, searching for a more flattering synonym.

Still, “It is that,” Eames agrees, non-committal, as he takes another casual glance to their south. “And solitary, yes, I’ll grant you that too. But not quite so empty as you’d think.”

Arthur’s eyebrows draw together, confusion evident and understandable: they’ve left the close protection detail back at the castle, the estate’s secure, private land, no ramblers allowed.

“You, me,” Arthur says. He nods down towards the castle and the lowland. “The guy down there with the horses. And?”

“And? Primarily?” Eames hooks a thumb over his shoulder in the direction they’ve come. “The bloke who’s been stalking us for the past five minutes.”

Arthur has his phone in his hand quicker than Eames can blink. “He’s trespassing. I’ll call the security office. Paparazzi?”

"No." Eames gestures to a glint of watery sunlight half a glen away. “There’s your paparazzo. Fairly certain he’s fallen asleep though. Also fairly certain that paparazzi don’t, by and large, come armed with silenced sniper rifles.”

“What—” Arthur begins.

But whatever else he has to say comes to a teeth-clacking halt. Eames pushes him to the ground, flattens himself hard atop — just as the sniper round imbeds itself into the hillside a scant half-foot above their heads.


	8. Chapter 8

“What a terrible shot,” Eames says, then he’s hauling himself up and off of Arthur, clambering to his feet.

He can cut the sniper off if he’s quick enough. There’s a little hare-run up to one of the old cairns. That’ll get him there quicker than not, and out of sight if he keeps to the—

“Eames!” Arthur grabs for his wrist. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Thought I might go and see why this fucker’s shooting at us,” Eames tells him, which he had assumed was fairly self-explanatory. There’s a faint scrabbling from above, a skitter of pebbles falling their way. The sniper’s on the move. “We’ll be back in his sights again soon if I don’t do something about him.”

But Arthur’s having none of it. “Don’t be stupid,” he says. He’s still clutching his phone. “I’ll call. Get help.”

“We’ll be more than done for by then.” Eames points east, to where the hillside is a mossy ripple of tussocks. “That way. Stay low and he’s no hope of a clear shot.”

Arthur offers some sort of protest, but Eames, this time, is no longer for listening.

 

#

 

His hare-run is a long-abandoned stalkers’ path that cuts a rough line where the forest meets the gorse. The sniper’s following it too, shadowing Arthur’s descent. But if he wants the shot, he’ll have to break the tree line to take it.

So Eames breaks it instead, right in front of him. They’re arm’s length and eye-to-eye. And it’s a blink, nothing more, but Eames — there’s a flash of recognition. Somewhere. Somehow.

But no time for that.

The sniper goes for his weapon. Eames gets close, into and out of range, snatches a knife and gets the butt-end of the rifle smashed into his forehead for the trouble.

It drops him to his knees. But that’s all the distraction he needs. He lunges, stabs the bloke in the back of the knee, pulls, tears, takes out all the essential bits and bobs. And as the sniper staggers sideways — tumbles sideways on a leg that can no longer hold him — Eames grabs for his unguarded sidearm.

He’s quick, but the bloke’s just as quick. The noisy end of the rifle’s pointing Eames’s way now, and there’s a finger on the trigger.

So—

It’s muscle memory. A homicidal bike ride. Drilled and practiced until no thought’s required, only instinct. Until his would-be assassin’s staring sightless up at the endless grey sky, a trickle of blood slipping its way down his bristled cheek.

“Jesus fucking Christ almighty.”

Eames crashes to the ground beside him. He’s in enough pain to make plain that there must be some sort of head wound — one, in fact, that’s making his left eyebrow uncooperative and rather more bloody than usual. But beyond the immediate, everything else is pleasantly — and increasingly — blurred.

Then it’s nothing much of anything at all when his eyelids give up on him too.

 

#

 

No notion of the passing of time. It could be a minute, it could be ten.

But—

The stampede of heavy-booted feet, a hoarse voice shouting, a reply tight with panic, with fear. Someone skids to a stop beside him. Grabs his shoulder and shakes.

“Your Majesty!” One of his close protection detail.

“He’s out cold.” Another voice.

And another, more familiar. “Oh god. Is he—” Someone else thuds to the ground. “Eames.”

Arthur, and Arthur’s hand on his arm, around his wrist again, scrabbling for a pulse point, and it’s the nip of his nails that finally drag Eames back into awareness.

He blinks a few times, slower than he should, finds Arthur swimming into view. He blinks again, against the blood stinging his eyes: Arthur’s hair’s a riot, blown out of its pomade by the wind and the rain.

That won’t do.

Eames reaches up to settle it. Finds his fingers a little unwieldy. He can’t manage the hair. Skitters his fingertips across Arthur’s temple instead, slips down his cheek, to his jaw, where a bruise is blooming on the cut edge and another on his cheekbone, beneath his dark, frantic eyes.

“Arthur, darling,” Eames says, and his voice is a groggy scratch, already fading. “Came back for me, did you?”


End file.
